BTR1701
2017-08-04 23:00:01 UTC
Lena Dunham turning informant on politically incorrect airline employees
shows how the Left is training us to internalize the ethos of the police
state.
By Robert Tracinski
Lena Dunham had a delayed flight and was walking through the airport when
she overheard two American Airlines employees having an unapproved private
conversation about transgender children. So she did what you naturally do
when you are a well-known "liberal" who believes in free speech and
distrusts big corporations: she ratted them out to their employer on
Twitter:
@lenadunham
Not gonna call out the airline who delayed cuz shit
happens BUT I did just overhear 2 @AmericanAir
attendants having a transphobic talk.
What took this from being merely bullying and repressive to being creepy
and totalitarian in style is that Dunham didn't just make a general
complaint. She then posted what looks like direct messages or text messages
between her and the American Airlines account, in which she
enthusiastically provides detailed information about exactly where the
conversation took place.
https://twitter.com/lenadunham/status/893004544036286466/photo/1
Saying "I overheard a conversation" but giving no specifics might prompt
American Airlines to send out a general notice to its employees to watch
what they say while in the terminal-- which is a little unsettling in
itself. But giving specific information only has one purpose: to help the
airline locate, identify, and punish these specific employees for holding
politically incorrect views.
It's the hashtag #acrossfromthewinebar that sent chills down my spine.
Dunham is acting like an informant working for a totalitarian police
state-- but boastfully, in public, on social media. With a hashtag.
Undoubtedly, someone will point out that this isn't really totalitarianism
because these are all voluntary actions by private citizens and
organizations, not the government. Dunham isn't a paid stooge of the
police, but a citizen acting on her own initiative. American Airlines isn't
doing this because the government told them to, but because they're
terrified of bad press. (Which they are still going to get, but from the
other side.)
Yet somehow this makes it all worse, because it implies we are being
trained to internalize the ethos of the police state-- and to enact it
voluntarily, on our own initiative, without having to be coerced. We're
building a self-enforcing police state.
Recently, I warned that The New York Times is trying to rehabilitate
Communism. When the Left finally succeeds in resuscitating totalitarianism,
we will already know all about how to inform on our neighbors by way of
Twitter.
There are three substantial ways in which this incident shows how we are
preparing ourselves for totalitarianism. One of the hallmarks of
totalitarianism is that the officially approved truth was capricious and
unpredictable, and that was on purpose. They wanted the approved ideology
to change so quickly that there was no way to comply with it by sincere
personal conviction. The only way to comply with it was out of a habit of
obedience.
Now, let's apply that to the substance of the conversation Dunham was
reporting, which she reports to American Airlines in highly specific and
intellectual terms: "I heard 2 female attendants walking talking about how
trans kids are a trend they'd never accept a trans child and transness is
gross." The idea that "gender identity disorder", which has now been
renamed to the more politically correct "gender dysphoria", is not a mental
illness but instead a valid lifestyle to be encouraged and humored is
relatively recent, working its way into the mainstream in the past ten
years. The idea of transgender children-- of taking a child's normal
confusion about gender roles, encouraging it, magnifying it, and using it
as the basis for irreversible medical treatments-- would have been
considered a form of child abuse to most people until about last year. For
many of us, it still is.
But why wait for the process of changing mores and attitudes to work their
way through the culture and bring people around to your side? After all, if
you wait for people to be convinced, there's a chance that they won't be.
It's like what Stalin said about elections: the problem is that you don't
know ahead of time who's going to win. Intead, people have to immediately
update their views to be consistent with the Current Truth, subject to
change without notice.
Now let's look at Dunham's reaction. She hears two people saying something
she disagrees with, and it never occurs to her to talk to them directly, to
attempt to persuade them or to listen to their point of view and engage
with it. She might have changed someone's mind or least gotten to
understand the reasons for their views. But why wait for persuasion when
you can use fear? Why engage individuals directly, as if they are fellow
human beings with equal rights, when you can go over their heads and use
your fame and influence to pressure their employers?
While reading about this story, I was reminded of this scene from THE LIVES
OF OTHERS, based on life within the oppressive police state of East
Germany:
Apparently, the same rules apply now. Better watch what you say, or a
powerful person might ask for your employee number and your life will be
ruined.
Finally, consider the role of the employer. When the Czech dissident Vaclav
Havel formulated his ideas for how to resist Communist tyranny, he noted
the role of the small business or employer who agreed to enforce the rules
and post the propaganda of the regime out of fear and conformity. Well,
that's exactly what we're up against now.
If the proper response for Dunham was to converse with those flight
attendants directly (or maybe just to mind her own business), then the
proper response of American Airlines was to tell Dunham that it is not in
the business of policing the private conversations of its employees. But
that's another way we're being prepared for the police state. While the
Left blusters about how they don't want big corporations to tell us what we
can think, their actions say otherwise. They absolutely do want employers
to be responsible for the private views and political activity of their
employees-- so long as the views they are enforcing are politically
correct.
So all the elements are being put together. We have a dogma propagated from
the top down, a cadre of informants who are proud and eager to report their
fellow citizens, and private institutions that are cowed and co-opted,
ready to deprive dissidents of their livelihoods.
It's no mystery why, despite loud protestations that things will be
different this time, socialism always ends with the midnight knock on the
door. By the time government begins arresting people, the public will
already have the mentality needed to accept and cooperate with the police
state.
When we talk about and celebrate the fall of Communism, we frequently focus
on the positive role of "people power". When the oppressed people of
Eastern Europe chose to reject and resist Communism en masse, it collapsed
seemingly overnight. But we don't like to think too much about the flip
side of that coin. Totalitarian regimes came into existence, and maintained
their existence, not just because dissenters were killed or kept in a state
of terror, but also because the regimes enjoyed the active complicity of a
large segment of the population. East Germany's Stasi, after all, had a lot
of employees.
The recent exploits of Comrade Lena are a warning that the new police state
will have plenty of its own enthusiastic enforcers.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/04/lena-dunham-and-our-self-enforcing-police-state/
shows how the Left is training us to internalize the ethos of the police
state.
By Robert Tracinski
Lena Dunham had a delayed flight and was walking through the airport when
she overheard two American Airlines employees having an unapproved private
conversation about transgender children. So she did what you naturally do
when you are a well-known "liberal" who believes in free speech and
distrusts big corporations: she ratted them out to their employer on
Twitter:
@lenadunham
Not gonna call out the airline who delayed cuz shit
happens BUT I did just overhear 2 @AmericanAir
attendants having a transphobic talk.
What took this from being merely bullying and repressive to being creepy
and totalitarian in style is that Dunham didn't just make a general
complaint. She then posted what looks like direct messages or text messages
between her and the American Airlines account, in which she
enthusiastically provides detailed information about exactly where the
conversation took place.
https://twitter.com/lenadunham/status/893004544036286466/photo/1
Saying "I overheard a conversation" but giving no specifics might prompt
American Airlines to send out a general notice to its employees to watch
what they say while in the terminal-- which is a little unsettling in
itself. But giving specific information only has one purpose: to help the
airline locate, identify, and punish these specific employees for holding
politically incorrect views.
It's the hashtag #acrossfromthewinebar that sent chills down my spine.
Dunham is acting like an informant working for a totalitarian police
state-- but boastfully, in public, on social media. With a hashtag.
Undoubtedly, someone will point out that this isn't really totalitarianism
because these are all voluntary actions by private citizens and
organizations, not the government. Dunham isn't a paid stooge of the
police, but a citizen acting on her own initiative. American Airlines isn't
doing this because the government told them to, but because they're
terrified of bad press. (Which they are still going to get, but from the
other side.)
Yet somehow this makes it all worse, because it implies we are being
trained to internalize the ethos of the police state-- and to enact it
voluntarily, on our own initiative, without having to be coerced. We're
building a self-enforcing police state.
Recently, I warned that The New York Times is trying to rehabilitate
Communism. When the Left finally succeeds in resuscitating totalitarianism,
we will already know all about how to inform on our neighbors by way of
Twitter.
There are three substantial ways in which this incident shows how we are
preparing ourselves for totalitarianism. One of the hallmarks of
totalitarianism is that the officially approved truth was capricious and
unpredictable, and that was on purpose. They wanted the approved ideology
to change so quickly that there was no way to comply with it by sincere
personal conviction. The only way to comply with it was out of a habit of
obedience.
Now, let's apply that to the substance of the conversation Dunham was
reporting, which she reports to American Airlines in highly specific and
intellectual terms: "I heard 2 female attendants walking talking about how
trans kids are a trend they'd never accept a trans child and transness is
gross." The idea that "gender identity disorder", which has now been
renamed to the more politically correct "gender dysphoria", is not a mental
illness but instead a valid lifestyle to be encouraged and humored is
relatively recent, working its way into the mainstream in the past ten
years. The idea of transgender children-- of taking a child's normal
confusion about gender roles, encouraging it, magnifying it, and using it
as the basis for irreversible medical treatments-- would have been
considered a form of child abuse to most people until about last year. For
many of us, it still is.
But why wait for the process of changing mores and attitudes to work their
way through the culture and bring people around to your side? After all, if
you wait for people to be convinced, there's a chance that they won't be.
It's like what Stalin said about elections: the problem is that you don't
know ahead of time who's going to win. Intead, people have to immediately
update their views to be consistent with the Current Truth, subject to
change without notice.
Now let's look at Dunham's reaction. She hears two people saying something
she disagrees with, and it never occurs to her to talk to them directly, to
attempt to persuade them or to listen to their point of view and engage
with it. She might have changed someone's mind or least gotten to
understand the reasons for their views. But why wait for persuasion when
you can use fear? Why engage individuals directly, as if they are fellow
human beings with equal rights, when you can go over their heads and use
your fame and influence to pressure their employers?
While reading about this story, I was reminded of this scene from THE LIVES
OF OTHERS, based on life within the oppressive police state of East
Germany:
Apparently, the same rules apply now. Better watch what you say, or a
powerful person might ask for your employee number and your life will be
ruined.
Finally, consider the role of the employer. When the Czech dissident Vaclav
Havel formulated his ideas for how to resist Communist tyranny, he noted
the role of the small business or employer who agreed to enforce the rules
and post the propaganda of the regime out of fear and conformity. Well,
that's exactly what we're up against now.
If the proper response for Dunham was to converse with those flight
attendants directly (or maybe just to mind her own business), then the
proper response of American Airlines was to tell Dunham that it is not in
the business of policing the private conversations of its employees. But
that's another way we're being prepared for the police state. While the
Left blusters about how they don't want big corporations to tell us what we
can think, their actions say otherwise. They absolutely do want employers
to be responsible for the private views and political activity of their
employees-- so long as the views they are enforcing are politically
correct.
So all the elements are being put together. We have a dogma propagated from
the top down, a cadre of informants who are proud and eager to report their
fellow citizens, and private institutions that are cowed and co-opted,
ready to deprive dissidents of their livelihoods.
It's no mystery why, despite loud protestations that things will be
different this time, socialism always ends with the midnight knock on the
door. By the time government begins arresting people, the public will
already have the mentality needed to accept and cooperate with the police
state.
When we talk about and celebrate the fall of Communism, we frequently focus
on the positive role of "people power". When the oppressed people of
Eastern Europe chose to reject and resist Communism en masse, it collapsed
seemingly overnight. But we don't like to think too much about the flip
side of that coin. Totalitarian regimes came into existence, and maintained
their existence, not just because dissenters were killed or kept in a state
of terror, but also because the regimes enjoyed the active complicity of a
large segment of the population. East Germany's Stasi, after all, had a lot
of employees.
The recent exploits of Comrade Lena are a warning that the new police state
will have plenty of its own enthusiastic enforcers.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/04/lena-dunham-and-our-self-enforcing-police-state/